“A programme to convert Hindu people into the Catholic religion is being implemented today. This problem is having a severe impact on the Hindu people of North-East. Those people asked us to obtain help from Bodu Bala Sena to find a solution to this problem.” – N Arunkanthan, President, All Ceylon Hindu Federation (Joint Media Conference with the BBS – 26.8.2014)[i]

National integration, BBS style. Meaning, inciting Buddhists and Hindus against Catholics/Christians and Muslims; dividing the two main ethnic groups along religious lines; making the Sinhalese forget their economic woes; making the Tamils forget all their woes, including the unresolved ethnic issue; creating a religious justification for the de facto occupation of the North and the galloping militarization, nationwide.

If the new plan is successful it will fracture Sri Lanka, along religious lines. It will also bring rich dividends for the Rajapaksas, starting with a substantial victory at the Presidential election.

The Rajapaksas control the state, the party and the army; Mahinda Rajapaksa still retains a considerable degree of popularity. But when it comes to polls, the Siblings do not take any chances, as is evident from the current happenings in Uva.

Violent attacks on the opposition commenced even before Uva nominations concluded. This week, the terror campaign reached a new level. The house of a JVP candidate was subjected to a hail of bullets, for about 45 minutes. The gun-toting attackers who came in Defender jeeps also chased the police away[ii]. As always, the attackers vanished miraculously, leaving the police clueless!

Unfree and unfair practices are now built into the electoral process itself. While these might ensure a bare or even a safe win, they will not suffice to bring about the spectacular victory the Rajapaksas desire. Naked terror is being used to fill the gap. Uva, after all, is very special, with a Presidential nephew in the ring. The Family must not just win; it must win colossal, in order to maintain its gilt and its dominance.

Uva therefore is a prologue to the Presidential election. Mahinda Rajapaksa must not just win, but win with a stupendously huge margin. There is nothing the Siblings will not do to ensure this necessary outcome, including igniting religious fires.

The Rajapaksas seem to have won the battle to prevent the opposition from fielding a common candidate. But other problems remain, including the possibility of vigorous campaigns by several opposition parties. If conducted with single-minded focus on the Rajapaksa menace, these separate campaigns can have a unified effect on the electorate, fissuring the Sinhala-Buddhist base of the Rajapaksas and persuading a segment of floating voters to vote against the UPFA. Consequently the Siblings will persist in creating conflicts among and within the opposition parties.

Then there is the danger of the minority vote going against the Rajapaksas, almost en bloc.

That is where the religious cards will become indispensable. If Sinhalese and Tamils can be divided internally, along religious lines, and if most Buddhists and some Hindus can be persuaded that they face an existential threat from Muslims and Christians, the Rajapaksas will benefit, politically and electorally.

If bogus religious issues are super-imposed on really existing socio-economic and political issues, the electorate can be confused and confounded. The Sinhalese can be frightened into thinking that the ISIS or some other Jihadhist outfit is here and only the Rajapaksas can save the land from this new menace. The Tamils can be divided along religious lines and made to blame each other – and the Muslims – for all their old and new problems. The entire electorate, from North to South, can be made so addlebrained with phobia and psychosis that they become incapable of seeing right or thinking straight. Many Sinhalese can be tricked into voting for the Rajapaksas, again, despite their obvious economic misery. Many Tamils can be tricked into abstaining or perhaps even voting for a BJP-style Hindu-extremist candidate who screams about saving Hindu faith, traditions and culture from Christian/Catholic and Islamic incursions.

The purpose of the new BBS-Hindu Federation partnership would be to divide so that the Rajapaksas can rule.

BBS Divides; Rajapaksas Rule

The desire to divide was clearly evident in the tone and the thrust of the joint BBS-Hindu Federation media conference. According to Galagoda-Atte Gnanasara Thera, Buddhists and Hindus must unite because they have common enemies. “Today the country is in grave danger. Lives were sacrificed to save the North-East. But the real owners are being chased away from these areas. Tamil villages are becoming Islamisised. Sinhala people as well as Tamil people have these problems….. There are problems about resettling Tamil-Hindu people made homeless by the war. But if they accept Christianity, they are allowed to settle down near the Madu Church.”[iii]

N Arunkanthan, the President of All Ceylon Hindu Federation, named the main targets – Catholic prelates of Jaffna and the TNA: “It is evident that this conversion programme has the support of Catholic priests of Jaffna and the TNA. Our politicians are not talking about these things.”[iv]

If an anti-Muslim/Christian Hindu-extremist party, along BJP lines, is set up, Tamil politics can be shifted, at least partially, onto a religious track. If Tamil-Hindus can be duped into a confrontational position with Tamil-Catholics and Muslims, the shock effects might be felt not just nationally but also in the Diaspora.

Twenty four hours after the first media conference, the BBS had another media conference, pushing the same angle. The National Organiser of the BBS, Vithrandeniya Nanda Thera announced that before abolishing the executive presidency or devolving power, extremism and terrorism must be destroyed. He claimed that Tamils in Vavuniya are being chased away from their original lands by Muslim invaders. A gentleman from Vavuniya, A Sanker, stated that his family and other inhabitants of Puliyankulama village in Vavuniya were chased away by bus-loads of Muslims. Mr. Sanker claimed that because the Divisional Secretary ignored the victimised Tamil villagers, they wrote to the President; the President wrote back promising justice. Mr. Sankar took this presidential missive to the Divisional Secretary. “He took the letter, read it and said, ‘What is this? Our President is Minister Bathiudeen’”[v].

In order to survive, the Rajapaksas must divide their opponents. And they will do so even at risk of civil peace and national security.

Create a Hindu-Catholic clash in the North and/or a Hindu-Muslim clash in the East, and every other issue, from land-grabbing by the military to joblessness can be shoved aside. The Siblings are still trying to build an anti-Islamic bridge to Modi-India; in a recent interview with Indian publication, Outlook, Gnanasara Thera proclaimed baldly that Lankan Muslims are a threat to India as well[vi]. Perhaps the Rajapaksas also hope to use the Jihadist-card to reach out to the West and those Islamic-countries at odds with the barbaric ISIS. If North can be made restive with ‘Hindu-Catholic’ clashes or anti-Papal demonstrations, perhaps Pope Francis can be persuaded to limit his visit to the South, for security reasons.

The recent rampage by Buddhist bigots against Muslims at Aluthgama and Beruwala resulting in the death of three persons, and injuries to 80, rendering over a thousand people homeless is a defining moment for Sri Lanka.

The headline “Country has a responsibility to promote Buddha Sasana” in the government-owned Daily News report on the President’s speech on July 3 eloquently summed up the President’s priorities. Addressing at the higher ordination ceremony of Buddhist novice monks, he blamed the ‘elements’ that wanted to destroy the country by letting these disputes be known to the outside world and “inviting unnecessary problems to the country.”

It is significant that he condemned neither the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) nor its extremist leader Galabodaatta Gnanasara Thera responsible for the Aluthgama attacks. He did not acknowledge his government’s failure to control the growing anti-Muslim activities indicating its culpability. In one breath Rajapaksa said “the country has religious freedom” while in another he spoke of the country having the responsibility to protect and promote the Buddha Sasana. So it is not surprising that Rajapaksa has given no course correction to curb anti-Muslim activities perhaps because his Buddha Sasana agenda does not include it.

From the statements of the President and other leaders of the ruling coalition three elements can be identified being blamed for the growth of anti-Muslim activities. These are foreign forces (identified as India, Norway and the U.S. by Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa), misuse of social media by vested interests, and the opposition United National Party (UNP) colluding with international NGOs. They are all united in tarnishing the image of Sri Lanka and the Rajapaksa government according to the ruling class!

The President probably feels that any action against the Buddhist monks could create a political backlash and erode his support among rural Sinhala Buddhist voters. The Saffron activism is also whipping up Sinhala nationalism which could be useful to repair the President’s image dented by his poor performance on the human resources front.

The largely Tamil-speaking Muslims form only about ten percent of Sri Lanka’s 20-million people. Their faction ridden political leaders usually support whichever coalition comes to power regardless of its ideology. Even after Aluthgama incidents, they have continued in their cabinet posts giving hope to the President that he could buy their support even if Muslim community does not support him.

Initially, Sri Lanka had tried to suppress the reporting of the Aluthgama riots. But it failed due to social media reports; so it is now trying to control social media and the NGOs. Al Jazeera reporter is being investigated for his video coverage showing visuals of saffron-clad monks leading the attackers on Muslims and their property. The Newsweek Pakistan has highlighted Sri Lanka’s lack of concern by quoting Sri Lanka Minister for Public Relations Mervyn Silva’s flippant remark that he was prepared to marry a Muslim woman “for the sake of national harmony.” These reports have caused concern in the Muslim world. Organisation of Islamic Cooperation is said to have expressed its concern to Sri Lanka.

In this charged atmosphere, Rajapaksa may face challenges from the Muslim world as well as international Islamic terrorism, which is on the ascent. According a report of July 8 the Director General of Muslim Religious affairs after going through a recording of Gnanasara Thera’s statement to the media affirmed before the Colombo Fort Magistrate that it contained certain derogatory comments on the Quran. This may well trigger the anti-Sri Lanka backlash in Muslim countries.

It could test Sri Lanka’s “all weather friendship” with Pakistan. Employment of Sri Lankans by Gulf countries and Saudi Arabia could be affected with its adverse impact on foreign remittances forming the bulk of Sri Lanka’s foreign exchange earnings.

Sri Lanka’s staunch Muslim friends may not support it at the forthcoming UN Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) where Aluthgama violence is likely to figure in the discussion on Sri Lanka’s human rights aberrations. This could result in further erosion of the President’s image at home.

The other more insidious challenge for Sri Lanka could be from Jihadi terrorism exploiting the situation to spread its wings among Sri Lanka Muslim population. The Pakistani Jihadi group Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) had in the past used safe houses in Sri Lanka to train and infiltrate Muslims extremists into India. The LeT could use the existing strong sectarian divide between the largely peaceful Sufi Muslim population and the smaller fundamentalist Wahabi elements to further its interest.

A small Wahabi fringe group the Tawheed Jamaat (TJ), spouting anti-Buddhist sentiments, already exists in Sri Lanka. It has fraternal links with TJ in Tamil Nadu which enjoys considerable influence. Though the Tamil Nadu TJ claims to be against extremism, it is led by former members of the proscribed terrorist group Student Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). This link has the potential to whip up religious passions among Muslims to condone if not support acts of Jihadi elements.

Last month when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met President Rajapaksa, he had drawn his attention to the recent arrest a Sri Lankan Muslim in Chennai caught while spying for Pakistani intelligence which had been helping Pak terrorist groups. Pak agents who employed the suspect were operating from their High Commission in Colombo. Realising the danger to national security from Pak terrorists, Sri Lanka is expelling 1500 Pak asylum seekers living in Sri Lanka.

So Rajapaksa has to fine tune his political priorities in handling anti-Muslim activity lest he jeopardises Sri Lanka’s national interests.

The request to write an article on US Policy towards Sri Lanka in 2008/2009 came at a timely moment, for I had been reflecting in some anguish on the crisis that the Sri Lankan government is now facing. I believe that this crisis is of the government’s own creation, but at the same time I believe that its root causes lie in US policy towards us during the period noted.

Nishan de Mel of Verite Research, one of the organizations now favoured by the Americans to promote change, accused me recently of being too indulgent to the Sri Lankan government. I can understand his criticism, though there is a difference between understanding some phenomenon and seeking to justify it. My point is that, without understanding what is going on, the reasons for what a perceptive Indian journalist has described as the ‘collective feeling that the Sri Lankan State and Government are either unable or unwilling’ to protect Muslims from the current spate of attacks, we will not be able to find solutions.

Nishan might have felt however that I was working on the principle that to understand everything is to forgive everything. But that only makes sense if corrective action has been taken, ie if the perpetrator of wrongs has made it clear that these will be stopped and atoned for. Sadly, after the recent incidents at Aluthgama, I fear the time and space for changing course are running out. But even if we can do nothing but watch the current government moving on a course of self-destruction, it is worth looking at the causes and hoping that history will not repeat itself at some future stage

My contention is that the appalling behavior of the government at present springs from insecurity. That insecurity has led it to believe that it can rely only on extremist votes and extremist politicians. Thus the unhappiness of the vast majority of the senior SLFP leadership, and their willingness to engage in political reform that promotes pluralism, are ignored in the belief that victory at elections can only be secured if what is perceived as a fundamentalist and fundamental Sinhala Buddhist base is appeased.

The problem is exacerbated by the adulation these forces offer the Secretary of Defence. Though the international elements that believe they need to interfere in Sri Lanka see the Rajapaksa family as a monolith (and are right to the extent that internal divisions will not interfere with united action against outsiders), the recent aggressive critiques of the government’s economic policies are a clear challenge to the Minister for Economic Development. These critiques will have no effect since he is seen as the genius behind electoral strategy. But they indicate what will follow a government electoral victory, since there is no doubt the President would prefer his son to be his successor, and the Secretary of Defence is more likely to fall in with such an agenda than his younger brother. What the President does not realize is that the extremists are as little enamoured of the son, with his penchant for Western modes of entertainment, as of the current economic dispensation.

Internal rivalries then play their part in the current crisis. More serious is the complete neglect of the real power base of the government, namely the old SLFP. But the President has no confidence in that section of his support base, and will not take the first step required to shore up his popularity, namely appointing a serious Prime Minister from their ranks. If only the leading contenders would get together and agree on a name, perhaps the most senior being the least contentious, they could help resolve the problem. But this seems unlikely, and so resentments will continue, with all sorts of elements opposed to the President fishing in the troubled waters, which in turn only increases his sense of insecurity.

But I do not blame them for the crisis. The depth of the forces ranged against them became clear to me when I was told in 2012 about the efforts made by the head of the kitchen element in our Foreign Policy trying to convince the President that the Indian Paarliamentary delegation, led by its present Foreign Minister, Sushma Swaraj, had connived with the Leader of the House to criticize him. Fortunately the Secretary to the President had been able to convince him otherwise, but the readiness of the President to believe the worst about the principal elements that would combat extremist influences on him shows how brilliantly the insecurity has been orchestrated.

With friends like that, then, who needs enemies? But I think to understand the sense of siege that has overtaken the government, we need to go back to the violent shock to the mindset that occurred in 2009. I refer to the range of forces that supported Sarath Fonseka for the Presidency when he ran against the incumbent President.

In 2009 I believe the President was willing to move forward on necessary reforms. Unless it is assumed that he is an inveterate liar, his commitments to both the Indian government and to the UN Secretary General indicate a positive mindset. And in all fairness to the Minister of Economic Development, in his previous incarnation he was absolutely sincere about resettling the displaced as swiftly as possible. It was then Sarath Fonseka who stood in his way, as for instance when the Commanders on the ground were told to recheck those who had been sent back to the various districts. But in those days the ground leadership, led by enlightened active generals such as Kamal Guneratne and Brindley Mark, only paid lip service to the instructions and sent the displaced swiftly to their original places of residence

But two months later, it was that same Sarath Fonseka who had become the darling of the West, or rather the Anglo-Saxons (a couple of European ambassadors told me they could not understand what was going on), and also of the Tamil National Alliance as well as the politically inclined NGO community, one of which actively endorsed Fonseka (though the more aggressively anti-government ones were more circumspect, understanding that Fonseka was only being used as a tool).

What had happened? The key, to be indulgent to the Americans, lies in what former Ambassador Robert Blake is supposed to have told a senior Indian politician, namely that they had discovered the perfect weapon to pressurize Mahinda Rajapaksa. In all fairness to Bob Blake, who I think had been a good friend to Sri Lanka when he was Ambassador, he was now serving a different administration, and was perhaps under pressure himself to correct what was seen as the triumphalism that accompanied the end of the war. I would like to think then that perhaps his idea, while playing along with his superiors at the State Department who were negative about us, was to keep our President on the straight and narrow by splitting him off from his hardline supporters.

But unfortunately the chosen instrument of the new policy was a new Ambassador, who was not as nuanced as Bob Blake. Though I can understand why one of the more sensitive American diplomats in Colombo at the time told me that he thought our best friends were Blake and his successor Patricia Butenis, that was after Patricia understood more about the country. In her first few months however, she saw things in black and white, and in her usual gung-ho fashion went straight into trying to ensure that Mahinda Rajapaksa lost the election.

I was present at what I think was a salient moment, at the house of her Political Affairs Officer, Paul Carter. He was by no means subtle, and later came into conflict with Butenis when he thought she was not being hard enough on us. The occasion was his Boxing Day Party, when I think I was the only government representative present. Present also was Mr Sambandan and, when I went to speak to him, I found him deep in conversation with Patricia and the then head of the EU Mission, who was also one of those deeply critical of the government at the time. Patricia, who always wore her heart on her sleeve, looked very shifty, and would not talk to me, and it was left to the EU to make polite conversation until I took myself away.

Sambandan ended up endorsing Sarath Fonseka, which was disastrous. I think the TNA now realizes how foolish it had been. Though I can accept their argument that they did not want to support the President, following the war, they could easily have kept neutral. By following the American line, they sent a message to the President that they would prefer anyone to him. Given that they well knew Fonseka’s much more nationalistic outlook, the argument that he had promised to give them what they wanted was no justification for spurning the President’s efforts at the time to reach a widely acceptable solution.

The American strategy was to unite all the forces opposed to the President, and perhaps hope that, if Fonseka won, he would live up to his initial promises and make Ranil Wickremesinghe Prime Minister and allow him to take all important decisions. That was an absurd supposition, and would not have been made by Bob Blake had he been on the ground. Indeed I suspect that Blake would have realized the absurdity of the strategy when Ranil dropped out of the race. Before that the hope would have been, given the simplistic interpretation of Mahinda Rajapaksa as a hardliner, that he and Fonseka would have split the extremist vote, allowing Ranil somehow to be elected.

But Ranil sensibly enough withdrew – which perhaps contributed to Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu’s claim, being now obliged to support Fonseka, that it was Ranil who had ruined everything. Saravanamuttu, it should be noted, clung to the old strategy even on election day, trying to create doubts about the results, in pursuit of the strategy the West has pursued with regard to elections where the result is not to their liking, of crying foul and encouraging civil unrest. Fortunately the margin was decisive enough in 2010 for that strategy to prove impossible, though there is little doubt that it will certainly come into play in 2015.

Contrary to what I believe the Americans initially wanted, though ultimately playing into their hands, was that the extremists rallied to the President. Indeed, when Sarath Fonseka emerged as the common candidate, those able to deal with Fonseka on his own terms became the leading lights in the election campaign. Symptomatic of the strategy was the way in which Fonseka’s insinuation that the Secretary of Defence was responsible for the killing of LTTE leaders who surrendered was tackled. Instead of calling the man a liar, and citing his previous claim that he was responsible (which indeed the Americans had helpfully brought to our attention), government summarily dismissed Mahinda Samarasinghe who had been asked to take the lead at a press conference, and instead entrusted the job to Wimal Weerawansa and his like.

The result may have seemed effective electorally to the government, but it was disastrous for the Secretary of Defence. It created the impression that he had indeed done what he was charged with, and Fonseka’s crime was revealing this, not that he had made up the story. And it also made it difficult for him to do what any army should have done when credible evidence of possible abuses was placed before it, as the LLRC indicated had occurred in a limited number of cases. Whereas he should have conducted an investigation transparently and taken disciplinary action if required, he had laid himself open to the charge of being called a traitor himself.

So the very simple way to have avoided an international inquiry, laid out so systematically by the LLRC, was blocked. Interestingly enough, whereas all other reactions to the LLRC were predominantly positive, it was only the Americans, the TNA and Saravanamuttu’s CPA who were deeply critical. But again government, instead of responding to this sensibly by promptly implementing the LLRC in full, instead allowed Weerawansa and the Secretary of Defence, through the Defence Ministry website, to attack it.

I can understand then why Patricia Butenis, in the last constructive conversation I had with her, said that the government was ambiguous about the LLRC. I did point out that the Americans were largely responsible about this since, when government had unambiguous embraced the LLRC, tabling its report and asking for an Action Plan on the recommendations, it was the Americans (not Butenis but Patricia Nuland in Washington) who had been harsh. Typically the government had then reacted by in effect saying, if you want more, we have people who want less. But I told her she should listen not to individuals but to the accredited spokesmen of government.

Who were these, she asked, which was understandable given their lack of apparent authority. G L and Mohan Pieris, I said, to which her response was that both now lacked credibility. This startled me, though I have since realized that her point was totally valid. But in a context in which the President has failed to discipline contrary views, indeed seems to use them to highlight difficulties he could easily overcome, and with both G L and Mohan tailoring their advice to what they believe the Secretary of Defence wants, it is no wonder that we have lurched from crisis to crisis.

Certainly there is no doubt that we have failed absolutely to try to understand the Americans and work together positively with them in areas where we should. Thus we lost a great opportunity way back in 2009, even while some elements in their ranks were hatching the Fonseka plot, in failing to respond to the Kerry Report. That had raised some questions about the war, but in some cases had even provided us with answers to allegations. The most serious allegation related to Sarath Fonseka’s alleged assertion about responsibility for the White Flag incident, and I pointed out how we should immediately respond to this. Lalith Weeratunge agreed, but a committee was appointed that never met. And Mohan who agreed that he and I could easily draw up answers did not push, so the opportunity passed.

There may however have been a conceptual problem here, because Dayan Jayatilleka, who also pointed out to the President the need for a response (and was reassured by Lalith that a committee was looking into the matter, though typically no one bothered to ensure that the committee met), told me that there was a school of thought in Sri Lanka that claimed the Report showed the Americans had softened towards us, and understood the importance of our achievement, and would soon cease to persecute us. I was told that this view was prevalent even in the Foreign Ministry, and G L Pieris cannot be blamed for this since he was not Minister at the time – which perhaps suggests that my criticisms of him, if not misplaced, should be more general.

Meanwhile the Americans were not resting. The conversation I mentioned with Patricia, who had been the most enthusiastic of foreign envoys in supporting my efforts, through the Council for Liberal Democracy, to bring politicians of different parties together to discuss reconciliation, took place in the Ministry of Defence. I think it was on the occasion, reported in Gota’s War when she had gone to explain away Paul Carter’s attempt to suborn the former Defence Spokesman, General Prasad Samarasinghe. That story was told me by the same NGO official, a friend of Bob Blake as well as generally supportive of government, who had told me about Kshenuka Seneviratne trying to create bad blood between the President and Sushma Swaraj and Nimal Siripala de Silva, and again I have no reason to doubt its accuracy.

Government as usual responded in a hamfisted fashion, allowing Patricia to offer her own explanation informally, instead of summoning her to the Ministry of External Affairs and making a formal complain, with a request for a written explanation. Thus, when I exposed the incident, Patricia was deeply upset, and turned in what struck me at the time was a Marlene Dietrich style performance, with a superbly suppressed sob, to express her sense of hurt. I too was sorry, because I had grown fond of her, and I continue to believe that, though she was driven by extremists, including Paul Carter, she was genuinely anxious for progress.

By then though our meetings had stopped, because after an adverse newspaper report in which Wimal Weerawansa had attacked her for something said at one of them, she had taken against Dilan Perera and insisted that I not invite him. I was not prepared to do this and I think this was seen as a test case of my commitment finally to a Sri Lankan agenda rather than an American one. But even so it is possible that, given the sterling commitment of Jeff Anderson, who had overseen the programme – and whose laconic comment on the Carter incident was that there were some very strange people in the Embassy – we would have continued had Carter not contributed to raising the stakes so aggressively.

Given all this, I think we must understand and sympathize with the anguish felt by the Secretary of Defence. Having received solid cooperation from the American government under George Bush, having I believe done his best to fight a clean war, he did not know what hit him when he became the target of criticism, with his own senior generals offered virtual asylum if they provided testimony against him – while Sarath Fonseka, who he knew had to be restrained on occasion, had turned into the darling of those members of the international community determined to criticize us.

But understanding his bewilderment does not excuse the dogmatic response he has engaged in. Following an extremist agenda because he believes these are the only people he can rely on had resulted in polarization that will destroy the country economically as well as socially. And sadly he does this whilst feeling immeasurably superior to other politicians, on the grounds that he is efficient and they are not.

I have some sympathy with this position, having seen how ineffective my colleagues in Parliament are. But we have also to recognize that he has highly trained professionals to work for him, whereas in other areas our administrators have been hamstrung and rendered ineffective by both the educational and the administrative systems; he has unlimited funds, a position only enjoyed also by his younger brother in the Cabinet, whereas other Ministers have to beg for funds and have no mechanisms to ensure coordinated action; and above all he knows he can do what he wants, whereas others are in danger of having their decisions flouted, with few able – as Karu Jayasuriya did – to say enough is enough and leave when he was not able to be an effective Minister.

So it should not be a matter for adulation that the Ministry of Defence works well. And it should certainly not be a reason for allowing the Secretary to dictate policies in other areas too. The recent tragedy of broken promises with regard to the Northern Province is symptomatic of the incapacity to understand the wider dimensions of the situation. We simply cannot alienate everyone, nationally and internationally, who does not share our mindset. And while I firmly believe we must continue our excellent relations with China, we must also follow Chinese advice and not believe that this can be done to the exclusion of others.

So, though I believe American machinations are to blame for engendering the current exclusivist mindset, the responsibility for the disasters that are piling up are our own. I believe the President is a capable politician and could change course if he really understood the position. But if he is lulled into complacence, as has happened year after year, if distrust of potential allies except for the family and the kitchen cabinet is inculcated in him, if he is not aware of the economic and educational problems that are mounting, then it seems we have only further suffering in store.

Whether the Americans will be happy with this I do not know. I would like to think not, but if we are not able to talk to them sensibly, then I suspect they will go into Mark Antony mode, as they have done in so many places lately, and with what they convince themselves are the best of motives, let slip the dogs of war.

The rise of extremism and violence against minorities signals the threat to peace and harmony. Compromise has no place within the philosophy of religious extremism. The noble philosophy of the religious teachings are blind folded when extremism march towards its goal of destruction. Recent conflict between the Buddhist extremists and the Muslims in Sri Lanka have demonstrated that human values are fully ignored and the laws of jungles prevail with the entry of political and religious extremism.

The ongoing tussle between the Buddhist extremists and the Muslims have demonstrated religion as a cruel killer, and not as a healer. Both parties have failed to see that religion has the force of compromising towards each other to endorse harmony with other communities embracing different faiths. The behaviour of both factions deviating from the concept of righteousness, have only demonstrated that they were preaching false religions, similar to some type of Cult organizations. Cult organizations and religious extremism have the same characteristics of a violent organization. Those engaged in propaganda of false religions failed to realize that realization of the divinity is the purpose of life which is the essence of religion and that it does not consist in erecting places of worship merely to show that this is a land of a particular faith. They failed to see what religion is about. Religion is the manifestation of the divinity already within man. The idea of realization is common to all religions. This is where religious extremists make blunders and mislead the people.

Various people from various countries with difference languages and culture search for God in pursuit of peace of mind. It is at this juncture the question arises as to how the mind roams about in search of God. The search for God revolves around the issue of spirituality. Places of worship represent as the meeting places where people could direct their minds towards God by way of meditation and the priests and preachers are there only to guide.

According to Lord Buddha ‘Goodwill toward all beings is the true religion; cherish in your hearts boundless goodwill to all that lives’.

According to Swami Vivekananda ‘There was any religion or yours, my national religion or your national religion; there never existed many religions, there is only the one. One Infinite Religion existed all through eternity and will ever exist and this Religion is expressing itself in various countries, in various ways.’

Religious extremists in Sri Lanka have to pay more attention to the statements of Lord Buddha and Swami Vivekananda. It is time to realize for all religious extremists to realize that all religions are like a garden of different flowers where each religion retains its unique nature as stated by Swami Ramakrishna Paramhamsa.

Fanaticism denotes lack of tolerance. The idea of extremism is linked to politics while the idea of fanaticism is linked to religion. In the case of BBS, they are filled with excessive and single-minded desire for an extreme religious or political cause. After the defeat of the LTTE, Sri Lankan ruling politicians have become warmongering sadists and appear to follow the path of political fanaticism as occurred in Russia, China, Cambodia, Ruwanda, Iraq and Libya, resulting in the death several millions of people. However, in Sri Lanka it appears that both political and religious fanaticism are blended together. The behaviour of the BBS demonstrates that political fanaticism is itself religious fanaticism. Their action has the force of nullifying the civil liberties which are enshrined in the constitution.

Though it appears that the Muslims have never openly antagonized the Sinhalese, the failure to speak up against terrorism makes the Muslims to isolate themselves from the mainstream society in all aspects, which is known as self-alienation. If they fail to speak up, they will wake up one day to find religious fanatics own them and the end of their world has begun. Peace loving Muslims should not pay attention to the religious fanatics who threaten our way of life. Moreover, the economic opportunities created in the Middle-East paved way for a new brand of imported Islam. The religious perception of the Saudis and other Middle East countries influenced their isolation from the main stream society. The self-alienation of the Muslims appears to be a new development, signalling the deviation of the country on the wrong direction – a fact suspiciously viewed by the main stream society when it comes to national events. For instance, Muslim schools operate on a different calendar though there were separate schools for Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims. Such a concession to the Muslims which was granted in 1950, was not a far sighted thought when considering the turn of events. Such a concession nullified the interaction of the Muslim with other communities, because at national events Muslims fail to hoist the national flag in front of Mosques and schools. One ponders about the contribution of Muslims at national events. Prior to 1970 and after 1970 after the introduction of Wahabbism, a difference in their dress code can be seen. One ponders whether such an attire has anything to do with Islam. Such a sudden change compelled the Muslims indirectly and gradually to voluntarily alienate themselves from other communities. Perhaps this was the situation in Myanmar (Burma) where the Buddhists had viewed the Muslims with suspicion on account of the sudden change with the introduction of Wahabbism.

In addition, after the attack on Twin Tower, it was common in Muslim countries (also in Sri Lanka) that Imams at Mosques were using sermons to promote Jihad. Such sermon will deny the hope of winning the hearts of law abiding citizens. They brain wash the young into supporting violent extremism. Apparently Muslims are not happy in their own countries, but are happy in the Western democratic countries. But Islamic terrorists want destruction in the Western countries.

There is a saying ‘if there is a beginning, there should also be an end’. Accordingly, if an individual starts committing acts of unrighteousness, he will also have to find out an end to justify his actions whether it is destructive or constructive and face their consequences. Similarly, even Imams using sermons to promote Jihad or promote actions of Islamic terrorists, should first realize the fruits of their actions in brain washing innocent Muslims into supporting violent extremism. It is the Muslims who will have to re-visit their extremism in the best interests of the country. Similarly Buddhist extremists using emotional slogans will also have to think of their actions when taking the law into their hands. Both factions will have to renounce their egoism which will eventually destroy themselves. Such emotional slogans will never win the hearts of law abiding citizens.

The behaviour of Religious extremists promoting and/or instigating destruction of properties and places of worships of other faiths cannot be justified. Such cowardly behaviour of religious extremists are detrimental to the best interests of the country. A man’s consciousness is distracted by senses and eventually lead to egoistic thinking or selfishness. The unstable minds of the BBS and the suspected Muslim politicians characterize their egoistic thinking and desire ridden actions. It is the lofty religious values which can help to expand human consciousness resulting in the renouncement of hatred and cultivation of love and compassion that will lead to peace and harmony as stated by Dalai Lama.

After the defeat of the LTTE, sporadic incidents in the Eastern Province and the recent incidents at Aluthgama and in other parts, speak of the ugly face of religious extremism. People of other faiths have never destroyed places of worship and killed their people. They do not even call for Jihad and death to all Infidels. Briefly Islamic terrorists failed to ask ‘what they can do for humankind before they demand humankind respects them’. This has been the outcome of Wahabbism. Simultaneously, the creation of BBS for political gain has also brought tension and conflict in the country resulting in damages to property and lives. There is also suspicion whether the creation of the BBS was to promote family bandysm of the ruling politicians on the pretext of attacking the Muslims.

Religious fanatics can only create conflicts and tension among the communities which is not a healthy sign for any country practising pluralism. Such man made conflicts can only be solved through human effort, mutual understanding with a sense of brotherhood. It is noteworthy mentioning that Canada which was insignificant about 150 years back today gives due respect to other faiths and is considered as a developed Nation, observes the path of Jesus Christ, Lord Buddha and Swami Vivekananda. But it is unfortunate to observe that Sri Lanka which boasts about 2,500 years of Buddhist heritage failed to observe those paths at a time when Buddhism is considered as a religion which teaches people ‘to live and let live’. The difference between Sri Lanka and Canada depends on the attitude of the people, moulded for many years by education and culture. In Sri Lanka both the Buddhist extremists and Muslims want to take advantage over everything and everyone. As a result their attitude can only push the country backward.

After the 2nd World War, wars have been fought to remove the obstructions for the restoration of righteousness. Victory in wars are not celebrated for suppressing the legitimate rights of the minority communities. Wars are fought to avoid the conflict arising from demanding for equality of rights by the minority communities. Tension can be defused by way of peace and exposing the merits of righteousness. This is what happened when Emperor Asoka realized his fault after listening to a sermon by a Buddhist monk. But today the rise of Wahabbism and Buddhist extremists have shattered many countries including Sri Lanka and posed a threat to peace and harmony.

The message of all Prophets and sages irrespective of any Faiths or Religions are same. First and foremost thing is that an individual should acquire a deep knowledge of his or her own religion, before understanding another religion. Thereafter an individual should understand each religion in its own distinctiveness and assess its own contribution to the unity of mankind. Every religion has universal human values and basic message for human beings.

It is time to realize that we belong to each other, though we embrace different faiths. A smile is a common language of love and not hatred. As the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregation, Lord Jonathan stated ‘God has provided one world with many faiths in which we all have to co-exist’. What is required is an interfaith movement to raise consciousness about the need for tolerance and mutual understanding between different cultures and religions. The urgent necessity is to establish an Interfaith Foundation is to defeat any religion being a militant in its nature. The issue is whether adequate measures be taken to ban all organizations engaged in spreading false religion to mislead the people, with the view to lay the foundation for the formation of an Inter-Faith Foundation.

How Sinhala extremism turned against Sri Lanka’s Muslims after the civil war

When i moved to Sri Lanka in the summer of 2011, I thought I wanted to write a book about the island’s past troubles. The civil war had ended two years earlier, suddenly presenting a chance to gather the sorts of personal stories that could neither be collected nor told easily over the previous three decades, when the conflict was still ablaze. But during my time there, Sri Lanka’s stock of strife replenished itself, and fear and violence rode forth from unexpected quarters. The furious swell of Sinhalese nationalism that had closed out the war with such brutality was now starting to poison other relationships in Sri Lanka.

One evening in Colombo, my friend Sanjaya dropped by, intending to collect me on our way to someplace else. I offered him a drink—beer, I seem to remember now, but given how the next two hours slipped clean out of our hands, more likely it was arrack. Arrack did that to you: it greased the passage of time. We sat around my dining table, Sanjaya telling stories and I listening. He told yarns tall and magnificent, embellishing on the run and possessing such a fondness for the absurd that he giggled as if he were hearing the tale and not narrating it. When he laughed, his eyes narrowed into letterbox slits, he quivered noiselessly, and his shoulders heaved. His mirth was tectonic.

“You heard they pulled a Muslim shrine down?” Sanjaya asked.

It had happened in the previous week in Anuradhapura, the ancient capital of Sri Lanka, and the most holy of towns for the island’s Buddhists. A group of Buddhist protesters—a busload, or two busloads, according to conflicting media reports—had arrived with crowbars and hammers and taken apart a small, old dargah. In this enterprise, they had not been stopped by the police or local administrators. Anuradhapura now bristled with communal tension.

“We should go there,” I said.

“We should,” Sanjaya said thoughtfully. “I know a guy who caught the whole thing on video.”

During the final years of the civil war, Sri Lankan Buddhism had developed a muscular right wing. First, in 2004, there was the launch of the Jathika Hela Urumaya, a political party led by Buddhist monks, some of whom admitted quite freely to being racists and bayed for a destructive, damn-the-consequences annihilation of the guerrillas of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. Nine of its monks entered parliament, and the party became a member—and an ideological heavyweight—in the coalition that ruled Sri Lanka. After some years, even the JHU was deemed by some to be too timid. In 2011 and 2012, two other sets of monks splintered from the JHU and started the Sinhala Ravaya (the Sinhalese Roar) and the Bodu Bala Sena (the Army of Buddhist Power), hijacking for themselves the shrill energy of Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism. On the flag of the Sinhala Ravaya, a lion bounds forward, holding a sword thrust forward in attack. The Sinhalese roar is practically audible.

During those two years, the Buddhist right developed a taste for straight thuggery. The Tamils, cautious and defeated, living under a crushing military presence in the country’s north and east, posed no present threat to Sinhalese Buddhism. So, instead, the Bodu Bala Sena and the Sinhala Ravaya—as well as the JHU, their milquetoast cousin—retrained their energies upon Sri Lanka’s Muslims, who form roughly 10 percent of the population. Unlike with the Tamils, no long skein of ancient hatreds between Buddhists and Muslims could be unspooled out of the island’s ancient Buddhist histories; no rankling grouses could be invoked as justifications for this new animus. But this did not matter. The Muslims were demonised, accused of eroding the country’s Buddhist heritage. In the absence of ancient hatreds, chauvinism can easily rustle up modern ones.

Through the months after I came to Sri Lanka, and in the years after I left, the country’s newspapers filled with reports of violence, and with pronouncements from Buddhist leaders on how they expected Muslims to behave. The JHU demanded the closure of Muslim-owned butcheries that sold beef, and forced the government to ban the certification of halal meat across the country. The Bodu Bala Sena attacked a popular Muslim-owned apparel store in Colombo, an incident that rose to prominence because of the size and popularity of this particular emporium. Other anonymous groups painted pigs on the walls of mosques. Some protesters stormed into the Sri Lanka Law College in Colombo, claiming that its examination results were doctored to favour Muslims. Calls went around for particular mosques and Muslim shrines around the island to be razed, ostensibly for being situated too close to Buddhist temples. Even proximity was unacceptable now. In the town of Dambulla, the chief priest of a local Buddhist temple led a protest to “relocate” a mosque. In the process, he warned, “Today we came with the Buddhist flag in hand. But the next time, it would be different.” No one stood up to these threats; Sri Lanka absorbed them passively and sailed on. It was a frightening, sickening time, plump with hatred and hostility.

The Anuradhapura Demolitionhappened early in September 2011. We went there in the very last days of the month, Sanjaya and I and another friend named Dinidu. From Colombo, we caught a night train to Anuradhapura, practically sticking our heads out of the open window for all five or six hours because our compartment was so stifling and airless. The train arrived at 3.30 am, and we were the only people to alight at Anuradhapura’s small, low station.

“During the war, whenever they wanted to make a film in which the Jaffna station appeared, they would use the Anuradhapura station instead,” Sanjaya said. He stood for a few minutes and looked up at the building’s facade, pearl white by moonlight.

In the morning, we visited Sanjaya’s contact Rizvi, himself a local journalist. He was a middle-aged man with brawny forearms and white stubble. Either he had known that we would be videotaping him or he was a punctilious dresser even at home, because he wore a white shirt with knife-sharp creases and a neat blue-and-white checked sarong. His first language was Tamil, but he spoke to Sanjaya and Dinidu in fluent Sinhalese. Whenever Rizvi said something significant, one of them would aim a translation in my direction. I sat off to the side, on a divan next to a window, scribbling.

It appeared that Rizvi was immensely fond of recounting the turns of bureaucratic wheels: petitions filed, orders issued and appeals counter-filed, deeds issued, public meetings held and reports written. From any mess of administrative detail, he was certain, a clear and potent truth would emerge. For Rizvi, everything had a procedural history, and for this reason he started the story of the dargah demolition by describing how he moved house in 1974.

Rizvi and his family used to live in a jumble of Muslim residences in the Sacred City, a zone wrapped around a giant Bodhi that was grown, according to legend, from a cutting of the original tree under which the Buddha attained enlightenment. Some families had been living in the area for more than a century. “We moved out because the drainage in that place was so awful. But, technically, we still owned our house there.”

In May 2009, a minister in President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government ordered all the houses to be knocked down, without compensation. Two weeks later the civil war ended, but Rizvi’s family felt no joy because they were so distressed about the demolition of their home.

The dargah had been in the very heart of this neighbourhood, and once the houses were stripped away, it shone through prominently. It had been built to honour Sikkandar Waliullah, a Muslim saint and healer who had been buried in Anuradhapura. No one had precisely established the antiquity of Waliullah’s life, although Rizvi claimed that the dargah had found mention in literature for at least 400 years. “Every year, there was a festival here, an urs, when holy men used to come to the dargah and hit themselves with hammers or stab themselves with knives, to prove the power of the shrine,” Rizvi said. “This at least, I know, had been happening for more than 50 or 60 years, because my uncle remembered seeing it when he was a boy.”

The very existence of the dargah now rankled the Buddhist right, as a plainly Islamic commemoration on Buddhist turf. The night before the Poya—or full-moon—holiday in June 2011, seven men on motorcycles drove up to the shrine. A Sinhalese man living in the vicinity realised they were armed with tools and crowbars, and he alerted the dargah’s caretaker. On that occasion, some tiles on the dargah were damaged, but the job couldn’t be completed. A band of Muslims confronted the seven men, the police turned up, and the wrecking crew was hustled out of the site. In response to the incident, a new, permanent police post was installed near the dargah, for additional security. “You can see it in the video of the dargah’s final destruction,” Rizvi said. “You can also see that the policemen are doing nothing.”

Anuradhapura was hushed and wary after this episode, bracing itself for more trouble. Around this time, hysterical pamphlets started to circulate within the town. Rizvi had saved three of them for us. Two were anonymous, but the third was signed by Amithadamma Thero, a Buddhist monk who was something of a firebrand among the local clergy. “I was surprised to see that monks were involved,” Rizvi said. “I would never have thought it possible.” The leaflets—all in Sinhalese—sealed the dargah’s fate.

The first pamphlet called the Sinhalese “the fastest vanishing race on the face of this earth,” and it worried that the country’s biggest threats came from its Muslims, who were “breeding like pigs.” There were further descriptions of Muslims, consisting of astonishing filth, and then:

We need a pureblood king who can proudly say to the world that Sri Lanka is a Sinhala Buddhist nation. He should be brave enough to say: “The other races that live here have to live by those rules, or they can leave.” We don’t need multicultural, multi-religious ideas. There has to be one Sinhala Buddhist country in the world. This is that country …

Do not sell your land and businesses to the Muslims. They are able to buy things for higher prices because of the money they get from their mosque and the Middle East for the breeding of their kind. You and I will die soon, but it is our duty to save this sacred land for the future generations …

The closing sentence was an instruction: to circulate the leaflet among Sinhala Buddhists only.

In the second pamphlet, the authors attacked the district administration for allowing the Sacred City to be defiled by the dargah and other non-Buddhist enterprises. To prevent a religious war, it said, the dargah needed to be removed. “Don’t you cow-killing, beef-eating, Tamil-speaking people already have a mosque in Anuradhapura behind the post office? Don’t make a joke out of our Buddhist heritage.”

The final leaflet, signed by Amithadamma Thero, was dated 2 September 2011. Calling the dargah a “mosque,” Amithadamma raged that its very presence in the Sacred City polluted Anuradhapura.

Who is responsible for this?

Corrupt politicians and certain robe-wearers who bow their heads and tangle a yellow robe about them but don’t even follow the Five Precepts. Shame on the Sinhala Buddhist policemen who protect this mosque …

Shame on the IGP [Inspector General of Police] who is using the police to protect this mosque. May Mahinda and Gotabhaya who are good followers of Buddhism become aware of this soon!

Pious monks and followers:

To save the Anuradhapura Sacred City from this Muslim invasion, come to the Dakkhunu Dagoba on the 10th of September at 1 p.m.

There was no mistaking that final line. It was a loud, clear call to action.

Just after noon, Rizvi interrupted his slaloming narrative to go collect his daughter from school. While Sanjaya and Dinidu sat on in the living room, paging through a trove of documents, I wandered outside. On the verandah, I ran into Mohammad, Rizvi’s son, a teenager studying for his A Levels. Who were we? he inquired, out of curiosity. I told him, and then, just to make conversation, asked who their neighbours were. He pointed out house after house; at the end he indicated a bungalow two doors away, where a Tiger suicide bomber had killed Janaka Perera.

Perera, a distinguished army general, had campaigned for the post of chief minister of the North Central Province in 2008. He had lost, but he was still an opposition leader, and he had opened a party office on this street.A crowd had collected at the formal inauguration of the office, and Rizvi’s brother, as well as his sister and her husband, had all popped over. They were standing outdoors, on a covered verandah very similar to where Mohammad and I now stood and talked. A man staggered into the throng, gibbering and gesticulating, pretending to be mad. Then he blew himself up. “His head had split into two,” Mohammad said, “and they found parts of his limbs on trees outside the house.”

Rizvi’s sister and her husband died on the spot. His brother was taken to the hospital. A shard of homemade shrapnel—the bolts, nails and broken razor blades that had been sewn into the suicide bomber’s vest—had embedded itself in his heart. But even this he might have survived, Mohammad said, had these fragment not been coated painstakingly with cyanide. “He was also a journalist, like my father, and he dropped his video camera right there. A metal piece went into that too.”

I realised I had seen this camera, a Panasonic that Rizvi still used. It had been sitting on a cluttered dining table all morning, charging. When I went back inside the house, I looked more closely at it, and I could see the path ploughed by the shrapnel, a deep furrow running just above the tape deck.

When Rizvi returned, I asked him about the bombing that had killed three members of his family in one fell morning. He gave me a thin smile.

“Not just them,” he said. Then he counted away, on his fingers, the number of people his family had lost to the Tigers. His sister’s father-in-law had died in a Tiger massacre of Sinhalese civilians in 1985, near the great Bodhi tree; 146 people died in three separate attacks in Anuradhapura that day. This man’s son—the brother-in-law of Rizvi’s sister—had been a civil servant in Muttur, in the east, when he was shot dead by the Tigers. Then there were Rizvi’s brother and sister and her husband; Rizvi had run out of fingers on that hand. “Now I am the only one left,” he said. I felt like I had picked at a loose floor tile and found a stash of corpses buried beneath.

In response to amithadamma’s leaflet, a couple of hundred people, under the bounding lion banner of the Sinhala Ravaya, assembled near the dargah. A large bus turned up as well, bearing men with tools and a few dozen monks. “Some friends had called me, saying that there was some trouble, so I had gone there with my camera,” Rizvi said. A squad of 50 policemen had cordoned off the dargah, but Rizvi discovered that this was to prevent the public from getting closer, rather than to protect the shrine. He tried to get nearer, but one of the policemen prevented him. “He told me: ‘Don’t go. These people aren’t here to speak or to listen to reason. They’re behaving badly.’” Rizvi stood with a tight, fearful knot of Muslims on the shoulder of the road, a hundred metres or so from the dargah.

At 3.45 pm, a local bureaucrat named GA Kithsiri—an assistant government agent, equivalent to a deputy district collector—entered the scene. “He came past us, and he said to me: ‘This is foolish. This is foolish.’ I told him: ‘That’s right. Please go and end this.’” Kithsiri strode away, towards the dargah. Rizvi watched the remainder of the afternoon play out at a distance. The wind snatched away so many of the voices that the events seemed to be part of a tragic silent film.

The monks had been squabbling with the policemen when Kithsiri arrived. He engaged animatedly with them; Rizvi could see hands being flung about, and shreds of shouting blew occasionally towards him. Then Kithsiri pulled out a cell phone and dialled a number. In the video, Kithsiri moves away from the dargah and paces back and forth, plunged into conversation. There is no way to tell who was on the other end of the line. Later, Rizvi heard that Kithsiri had first tried to calm the mob, telling them that he already had orders from the ministry of defence, run by Gotabhaya Rajapaksa—the president’s brother and the country’s most frightening man—to demolish the dargah in the next three days, assuring them that he would attend to it. When the men insisted on finishing the job themselves, and right away at that, Kithsiri called his superiors and asked them what to do.

In any event, in the video, he appears to have received some set of definitive instructions. He hangs up and walks—reluctantly, to my eyes, as if his feet weighed many tons—back to the dargah, to speak to one of the policemen. Some new commands are snapped out. Then the police cordon ebbs, and the destruction commences.

We climbed into rizvi’s van, and he drove us through the Sacred City towards the location of the dargah. The Buddha loomed over us, in the form of the head and shoulders of a gigantic white statue visible above the line of scrub and low trees on the side of the road. Rizvi pointed out where his family’s houses had stood before they were rubbed out in 2009. The access path to the dargah, from the main road, was blocked by an army barricade; we were allowed no closer. Rizvi didn’t stop, for fear that soldiers would come over and question us; instead, he crept on slowly but steadily. From the van, we could make out only the low wall of the dargah’s compound and some Buddhist bunting that had been looped around the trunks of trees. There was, of course, no dargah to see.

In Rizvi’s video, the dismantling of the dargah is clinical and coordinated, and it holds a perverse allure that makes it difficult to look away. The monks are attired in their orange habits, but the other men wear white work gloves and carry just the right tools for the job. They have come fully prepared, and also fully confident that they will not be stopped.

First the men hang Sinhala Ravaya flags from the branches of nearby trees; it is important to advertise the organisation under the auspices of which these activities are being carried out. They peel away the sheets of tin that form part of the shrine’s modest roof, chucking them over the waist-high compound wall with a clatter. Large, Islam-green blankets of cloth covered Waliullah’s tomb; these are yanked off and burned. Somebody found a couple of Qurans within the shrine, Rizvi told us; one of them was thrown down a well, and the other was shredded and added to the bonfire. We can’t see this in the video, but the earth around the fire is littered with white rectangles that might be pages ripped out of books. A monk stands over the fire, superintending it with such care that he resembles an attentive chef stirring and peering into his pot. Another man, with a long metal bar, is trying to take down, or at least damage, the compound wall, and his pounding upon the brick sounds tinny and melancholic.

At some late point during the hour-long demolition, Rizvi managed to creep closer to the site and continue filming it in brief bursts. By this time, the dargah has been pulverised into a mess of masonry. The fires have reduced and expired, and helices of smoke seep out of the embers. Much of the mob vanished after the shrine was pulled down, although on the soundtrack we can still hear the occasional jab at the still-standing compound wall, or the thunder of the tin sheets. The drama of the afternoon has leaked out, but a dazed air hangs over the small set of muttering onlookers; they are like the audience at a mystifying play, still trying to make sense of the plot, hanging around the theatre in the hope that an epilogue will provide some explanation. But, by 5 pm, it is all clearly over. In one of the last frames of the video, Rizvi pans away from the rubble and captures the police post that had been set up for supplemental security, a dark-blue booth with the words “Solex Water Pumps” painted on it. A solitary policeman stands nearby. He dusts his hands off by slapping them against each other, looks towards Rizvi’s camera and then looks away again. He is relaxed and calm. No strife seems to have stained his world at all.

This essay is adapted from Samanth Subramanian’s This Divided Island: Stories from the Sri Lankan War, published this month by Penguin India.

“…it is time that the world adopt a position that refuses to countenance Religion as an acceptable justification for, excuse or extenuation o, crimes against humanity.”

Wole Soyinka (UN Conference on the Culture of Peace and Non-violence – 21.9.2012

Eat, Pray, Fast’ was the title of a photo-essay in the Foreign Policy magazine marking the beginning of the 2013 Ramadan season . The pictures provided a glimpse of the wide and varied spectrum of global Islam – from the hip young protestors of Turkey breaking fast in the Gezi Park to a fully-covered woman outside a mosque in India.

This rich variety is inadmissible to two sets of people – anti-Islamic extremists and Islamic extremists.

The rigid and counter-reality notion of what constitutes a Muslim is the common ground between the BBS (and its Christian/Jewish/Hindu variants) and the ISIS (or Boko Haram or Taliban etc). The BBS believes that all Muslims are fundamentalists obsessed with global domination and Jihad. The ISIS believes that only those who support its notion of Islam and its Caliphatist pretensions are Muslims. Neither set of extremists admits the existence of a vast majority of ordinary Muslims beyond their confined horizons.

In his incendiary speech at Aluthgama, Galagoda-Atte Gnanasara Thera wished the Muslims shops of the area ‘Aba Saranai’. This unfamiliar phrase is said to be a wish for destruction, a lethal curse. That an adherent of the teachings of the Buddha cannot wish destruction on any living being is a foregone conclusion. But for Buddhist-extremists, from Myanmar to Sri Lanka, heaping verbal and physical violence on enemies is a national/religious duty.

The politics of ‘Aba Saranai’ is premised on hating and working for the destruction of unbelievers. Incidentally, the category of unbelievers is not limited to those worshipping a different god or following a different religious-teacher; it also includes those who worship the same god or follow the same religious teacher, in a different way.

Sinhala-Buddhism is far more intolerant of non-Theravada variants of Buddhism than of Hinduism, Christianity or Islam. The BBS types are at their most vitriolic when it comes to monks who disagree with their twisted form of Buddhism. Medieval Christianity’s preoccupation with ‘heresy’ gave birth to the Inquisition and to the deadly confessional wars in the heart of Europe. Before the self-professed Caliph of the nascent ISIS-state gave his inaugural sermon from the historic Grand Mosque in Mosul, he ordered the execution of its Sunni Imam, Muhammad al-Mansuri – for refusing to pledge allegiance to the new ‘caliphate’. Two days later 12 other Sunni clerics were executed for the same crime, according to the UN . The ISIS has also threatened to attack Shia holy places in Iraq.

Even the most secular society has its share of religious extremists. They have always been with us and it’s possible that they will always be with us, in one form or another. So long as they vegetate in their own ideological ghettos they cannot do much harm to larger society. The danger is when a governing class, party or family adopts their ideas and slogans either out of genuine conviction, opportunism or a combination thereof. When that marriage between extreme religion and politics occurs, it brings forth devastation, including self-devastation.

There is a nexus between anti-democratic politics and religious extremism. Actual and would-be despots see in extreme versions of religion a weapon and a shield for their political projects. In Nigeria it was the encouragement accorded to extreme forms of Christianity by the country’s military rulers which paved the way for the creation of that horror, Boko Haram. In Iraq, Premier al-Maliki’s Shia-supremacism made it possible for the ISIS to grow from nothingness to the monster it is today. It is an open secret that Myanmar’s military rulers are enabling/supporting Monk Wirathu and his 969 Movement. He had openly come out against Aung Sang Suu Kyi (despite her unprincipled refusal to condemn anti-Muslim violence) warning that chaos will result if she wins the presidency . In Sri Lanka the meteoric rise of the BBS would have been impossible without overt and covert state patronage.

The BBS has already begun to create a faux nexus between ordinary rice-and-curry issues and the Muslim bogey.

According to Galagoda-Atte Gnanasara Thera, “It is Muslims businessmen who import dhal and rice to this country. There are big problems here.” Once upon a time, not so long ago, Tamils were blamed for cost-of-living issues and that lie provided an added impetus to the fires of Black July. Today the BBS is insidiously cultivating the image of the rapacious ‘Muslim businessman’ who is exploiting Sinhala-Buddhists (a similar bogey-making process preceded the 1915 riots). Thus when Sinhala-Buddhists are overwhelmed by economic woes, the BBS (or its successor/s) will hold high the bogey of ‘Muslim exploiter’, diverting majoritarian anger away from the real culprits – the ruling family.

When the Muslim bogey becomes dysfunctional for some reason, there is always the Christian bogey and the Tamil/Hindu bogey. The BBS continues to highlight conversions to Christianity as a critical national issue . It is also demanding that Pope Francis apologises for the crimes of colonialists . If the Pope visits Jaffna and makes some acknowledgement of the plight of the Tamils, the BBS might replace ‘Muslim enemy’ with the ‘Christian/Catholic/Vatican enemy’, for a while.

Resisting Religious Politics

Extremists of all faiths agree that life and society should be reordered in accordance with religion, the only difference being whose religion. They oppose the secular humanist values of the Enlightenment, pluralist democracy and cultural diversity. Most of them are also against welfare capitalism.

Commenting on the unravelling of the Egyptian revolution Khaled Hroub said that “in the period just ahead of us, these two questions or logics – the slogan ‘Islam is the solution’ and the discourse in the name of the religion – will, with their ideological burden, face the test of a public, mass experiment conducted in the laboratory of popular consciousness. The experiment may last a long time, devouring the lives of an entire generation.”

The BBS types too insist that ‘Sinhala-Buddhism’ is the only solution to Lankan problems and the right way forward is to head backwards to a neo-feudal era. For them pluralist democracy is a curse which divides Sinhala-Buddhists and empowers the minorities. This anti-democratic version of politics in which individual and collective human rights are vitiated and replaced by Sinhala-Buddhist rights (to lord it over the minorities) works in favour of the Rajapaksas and their familial project.

We live in pluralist societies. In such societies, religious politics and politicised religions cannot but lead to alienation, civil hostility and conflict. The de facto dismemberment of Iraq (into a Sunni state, a Shia state and a Kurdish state) is a warning that the plague-bacilli of Balkanisation might infect Asian and African continents if the current trend of religion enmeshing with politics is not impeded.

In Sri Lanka the political masters and the religious pawns are cajoling and pushing the majority community into a series of conflicts with every single minority community. If we follow this Rajapaksa/BBS path, ‘Aba Saranai’ may will become the fate of Sinhala-Buddhists.

In the weeks that have passed since 6-15 (15th June) when Sri Lanka witnessed one of the worst outbreaks of anti-Muslim violence, the official narrative has been as chilling as the events.

The government initially dismissed the violence that has so far claimed at least four lives directly, displaced over 370 families and damaged property worth about Rs. 5.8 billion[1] as a “minor incident”.

Blaming the Victims

The Sri Lanka Government’s first formal statement on the events was delivered at the 26th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, four days after the riots. In a shocking omission of facts, the statement makes no reference to the pre-planned rally held that day in Aluthgama where prominent members of the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) addressed a gathering of over 7,000 people, declaring the end of all those who laid a finger on a Sinhalese.[2] Instead the government statement narrated two other incidents, both of which positioned Buddhist monks as victims and Muslims as culprits. The first was an alleged assault on a Buddhist monk by three Muslim youth. The second, described as the ‘incident that led to the violence’ alleged the stoning of monks and other individuals as they were ‘passing a Mosque in Dharga Town’.

The official stance currently formulated is that nebulous and unnamed Muslim extremists are to blame. Following widespread condemnation of the violence, both at home and internationally, Buddhist extremist groups and political parties represented in the ruling alliance were quick to shift the blame to unseen Muslim extremists.

Manipulation through Media

The contortion of facts was not limited to the international fora. A narrative that over-looked the obvious agency of the BBS and placed a spotlight on the bugbear of Muslim extremism was widely reproduced in the state media. In recent years, ample room has been given for propagation of anti-Muslim hate speech and violence, which have been nurtured with alarming frequency. In this context, the mainstreaming of such a misleading narrative is a further disturbing development.

The government blames the eruption of violence on conspirators who have designs to discredit Buddhists and tarnish Sri Lanka’s image internationally. This explanation is now as tired as it is ridiculous. The government has been rolling it out for over five years – especially when journalists and oppositional figures are killed/disappeared. The only difference now is that the conspirators seem to have converted to Islam.

Blamed though they have been, when pushed, military spokesman Brigadier Ruwan Wanigasooriya admitted that the military intelligence, maintaining a presence that covers the entire country, has not found any evidence to back claims of Muslim extremist groups operating in Sri Lanka.[3]

Telling the Truth about the Government

The truth has always been different to what the government has said. Today, the truth is that the government of Sri Lanka is the chief incubator and facilitator of extremist Buddhist groups responsible for orchestrating a vitriolic hate campaign against the Muslim community, and whose actions in Aluthgama on the day of the riots were a direct incendiary to the mayhem and violence.

Any attempt to re-write the story of Aluthgama by tracing the source of trauma to non-existent Muslim extremists must be called out for its falsehood. The people in Sri Lanka today, and especially the Muslims should recognise the true face that they have to fear. It is the face that masquerades as the solution, when in fact it is the problem. It is the face that controls the monopoly on violence. Sri Lankans, no matter their ethnicity or religion, who forget this or fail to see it will do so at their own future peril.

Members of Parliament Must Move on the Matter

MPs who have spoken straight and called a spade a spade have invariably suffered vilification and pushback from the government. Minister Rauf Hakeem too has been attacked for voicing opposition to what has happened. Yet, he will need to do more to establish the credibility of the SLMC, win back the confidence of the Muslim people and recover at least a modicum of dignity to the Ministry of Justice which he heads for the government.

Others with self-respect in parliament who also now know that what happened, and the way it has been covered up, simply cannot allow these events to be glossed-over or forgotten. If they do, it will happen again. High officials have trotted out illogical and false explanations, and since the government will not, at least members of parliament must move to hold them to account.

The Government is Accountable

Events of 6-15 in Aluthgama, Beruwala, and the surrounding areas, and their aftermath, should leave no further doubts that the only way to salvage from the current malaise is for all citizens, Muslims included, to steadfastly insist that the political establishment and the institutions of government in Sri Lanka be subject to democracy and be accountable to the citizens.

The non-accountability of the state is today’s most critical problem. It is this problem that makes international attention on Sri Lanka a relief to the citizens of Sri Lanka and victims of this government. The wisdom of the SLMC in drawing international attention to information on past violence is now evident. Perhaps the SLMC has not done it enough. The religious entities, particularly the All Ceylon Jamiyyathul Ulama, having experienced on earlier occasions in allowing it’s outreach and credibility amongst the Muslim community to be used would do well to refrain from areas that are strictly not their expertise.

The government will not change its ways until those who call the shots and the high officials who dance to their tunes are made to face the force of accountability. Accountability to the public, accountability to justice, and accountability to universal human values that we all share, irrespective of our ethnicities and religions.

In the wake of last month’s communal violence in Sri Lanka’s South-West, the Rajapaksa’s government’s threadbare defence is that existing laws are insufficient to take action against the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) masquerading as protectors of Buddhism. We see this articulated with increasing if not highly unconvincing force by the Secretary Defence who is President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s brother and others.

Explanations for state inaction

Granted, it is futile to engage this government with a critique on the law or the absence thereof. This is a regime which after all, contemptuously pushed the law aside when impeaching a Chief Justice. And action is not taken against the BBS due to palpable lack of government will, not the lack of law.

Several explanations may be offered as to why this is the case. Taken at its worst construction, the BBS is a particularly repulsive genie in a bottle cherished by some (not all in government ranks), wafted out of thin air and then confined until the next outburst occurs. At its best construction, state inaction is due to the fear of antagonising a highly vocal Sinhala-Buddhist radical establishment supported by segments of the Sangha which has now emerged into its unnerving own. In every country, this lunatic fringe establishment exists in one way or another. We see this in the rightwing extremist factions in the United States and anti-minority opinion in India. And let us not even go into the atrocities perpetrated by Islamic fundamentalists throughout the world.

Further, this is not to say that radical Islamic opinion does not exist in Sri Lanka. Whether it is Buddhism, Christianity or Islam, radical sects do exist. They should be appropriately dealt with under the law. Organised religious institutions have been traditionally unable to discipline its errant members. The historic silence of the Catholic Church in regard to prove patterns of child abuse by its clergy is one such example. So while one may bewail the stony silence of the Sangha councils charged with disciplining Buddhist monks, one can scarcely be surprised. These are not failings peculiar to Sri Lanka or Sinhala-Buddhists.

State complicity in dealing with the BBS

But radicalism and religious hierarchies aside, what distinguishes post-war Sri Lanka is the discarding of the law and the apparent state impunity afforded to saffron clothed terror groups when they incite communal hatred. The inaction of the police during the riots, the absence of actual investigations after the violence and this week’s laughably theatrical questioning of the BBS’s Gnanasara Thera all point to this.

This is the element of state complicity which irrefutably marks the Aluthgama and Beruwala violence. Doubtless, this is also what led to those who control affairs in Sri Lanka scrambling in the aftermath to distance themselves from the BBS.

Yet the point is that badly reasoned justifications for government inaction only aggravate the problem. In this sense, one is not merely talking of further negative international opinion or the painting of all Sinhalese as racist barbarians which are inevitable consequences thereof. Considerable distaste and consternation has been expressed by Buddhists themselves who resent the use of the Dhamma for such unholy purposes. This is surely a concern that should preoccupy a regime boasting of the Sinhala-Buddhist vote?

Enough law exists

And from a purely legal perspective, the government’s excuse that it lacks necessary laws can be easily dispensed with. One does not necessarily have to go to the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA, 1979) which has been swiftly used against journalist JS Tissainayagam and politician Azath Salley. This draconian weapon of Sri Lanka’s defence establishment should not be cited even against the BBS as a matter of principle. Moreover there is not a slightest chance that it will actually be so employed.

In any event, we already have a ready-made law to tackle religious extremism. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) Act No 56 of 2007 was occasioned by ripples arising as a result of a constitutionally untenable 2007 decision of the Supreme Court (Singarasa case, per Sarath Silva CJ). Here, Sri Lanka’s 1997 accession to a procedure permitting pleas by Sri Lankans to an independent committee of international jurists was declared unconstitutional.

The 1997 accession had been shrewdly spearheaded by then Foreign Minister the late Lakshman Kadirgamar. Its casting aside by the Silva Court essentially led to the integrity of the country’s judicial systems first attracting widespread international attention. These initial ripples coupled with unprecedented failures in political accountability in the conducting of the war in the Wanni in later years led to massive storm waters that are now engulfing the country.

Sending a clear message to those urging accountability

At that time, the ICCPR Act was cosmetically enacted to offset the repercussions of the Singarasa Case. It failed in that purpose and was generally unremarkable in content. However, its Section 3 (1) mandates that ‘no person shall propagate war or advocate national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence.’ Also prohibited is aiding, abetting and even somewhat interestingly, threatening to commit such acts. Expedited trial processes are provided in the High Court.

These laudably broad sections can be used against the BBS. Given the context in which this law was enacted, it would also send a clear message to those urging Sri Lanka’s accountability. At a more pedestrian level, the Penal Code is also available. The public address by Gnanasara Thera calling upon the ‘Marakkalayas’ to be attacked just prior to the communal violence in Aluthgama and Beruwala, falls classically into the prohibited categories. If this is not hate speech, what is?

But laws are used only selectively as the entire period of the post-war Rajapaksa era demonstrates. Its frantic denials of non-association with the BBS therefore remain unacceptable. Mere verbiage and protests that existing law is ineffective only make this worse. At least the sham should be exposed for what it is.

As UNHRC intensifies its probe into war crimes it is pertinent to note Sri Lanka is adding more ammo through its stubborn stance of militarising the whole nation. Just as it fortified North and East post-war and empowered its military towards re-constructing and repairing damaged properties thereby side-lining Tamils into providing them with employment in the process, it is doing the same in the South where Muslim properties were vandalised by dark elements of extremist Buddhist forces.

Two hundred million rupees are allocated to the military to repair the damage and destruction done to Muslims in the South which is half of the actual loss which is Rs 400 million according MP Azath Sally.

It is only fair that Muslims are entrusted with rebuilding their damaged properties and compensate for business losses and not the security forces. It is the security forces who remained silent throughout the mayhem caused by BBS.

As Muslims begin the fast in this Holy month leading to Ramadan the government would do very well to at least show some compassion as Lord Buddha preached and give hope to rebuild their lives. By entrusting the funds provided to give employment for Muslims the government might regain its lost confidence among the Muslims albeit too late.

The demonstration by diaspora Muslims in front of UN compound in Geneva will not go un-noticed. Rather it will strengthen evidence already available to pressurise the government into accounting for tis war crimes and injustice to minorities.

If Muslims do not want to go the same route as war –ravaged Tamils then it is incumbent on Muslim parliamentarians to immediately put a stop to military intervention in rebuilding the damaged Muslim South enclaves. Muslim nations have been alerted to the government’s strategy of enslaving minorities through recent anti-Muslim activities directly orchestrated by Gotabhaya, the Defence Secretary who is also entrusted with Urban Development Authority.

All signs out there show Sri Lanka is descending into a military state such as Myanmar and Pakistan under Musharaff.

Mainstream media and social blogs which earlier applauded the President for his victory over LTTE terrorism are now disgruntled with the government as is seen in the changing attitude of editorials. The government is bent on committing social suicide before the UNHRC probe begins in final investigations as is shown in recent upsurge of extremist Sinhala forces agitating and inciting hatred towards minorities.

Senior ministers within the government are showing discontent with the President’s increasing reliance on his empowering the family and the military to his own detriment.

The ministers Mahinda surrounds himself with have a history of bed-hopping. Forgetting the opposition, the enemies are his best mates at the moment. Before the blink of an eye the three armed forces can unseat the government as history in Myanmar and Pakistan proved.

The government will have nowhere to turn to when this happens.

If Tamil parties including upcountry Tamils and Muslim political groups join forces as is portended then this wold be the death-knell for the government and which is eagerly awaited by most Sri Lankans including the majority Sinhalese. Sri Lankans have had enough of the North Korean style of governance which is extravagant motor races in the close proximity of sacred places, granting license to operate Vegas style casinos and looking the other way when foreign prostitutes descend here as artistes and hostesses of gambling dens.

Even the government’s denial of providing visas to UNHRC team would not deter it from taking it before the International Criminal Court and its fate would not be different from those of Yugoslavia’s Slobodan Milosovic and several African and South East Asian leaders.

In its 2014 report US states The Fragile States Index ranks Sri Lanka in 30th place among 178 countries. This too will be added to the piles of evidence so far gathered against Sri Lanka.

“How could we not have seen what was coming, until it had arrived in our midst, clanking and smoking?” John Banville (Shroud)

President Mahinda Rajapaksa is furious. Not about the Aluthgama riots; that, in his eyes, was a ‘most minor incident’. He is furious about the peaceful protest (Hartal) against the Aluthgama riots.

Little wonder then that Galagoda-Atte Gnanasara Thera is not only free but was allowed to hold another ‘religious meeting’ in Kandy.
According to President Rajapaksa, murder and mayhem constitute far, far lesser crimes than a peaceful protest: “During the conflict period the LTTE killed people irrelevant of their ethnicity. Certain groups that didn’t dare stage a single hartal campaign during the LTTE period have now started them. Large scale (Maha loku) hartal campaigns are organised for even the most minor incidents.”
Is it any surprise that the police, instead of arresting the criminals of Aluthgama, are hot in pursuit of the organisers of the peaceful Hartal?

In this context, if Minister Vasudeva Nanayakkara succeeds in bringing a law against hate speech, it will be used to silence not the BBS/JHU/Ravana Balaya but to incarcerate those who criticise the hatemongering of Galagoda-Atte Gnanasara et al.

Once, not so long ago, this President justified attacks on Muslims by claiming (entirely apocryphally) that only child rapists have been targeted. This week he dismissed an outbreak of violence which claimed four lives and inflicted a festering wound on the ethno-religious fabric of Sri Lanka as a ‘most minor incident’. Can his government be trusted to discover the truth about Aluthgama and prosecute those responsible?

According to Parliamentarian Mangala Samaraweera, the Aluthgama riot was a concept of Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, implemented by certain military officials. Mr. Samaraweera, given his past affiliations, would know what the Rajapaksas are capable of. And he would not have made such an extremely serious allegation outside parliament unless he had some evidence to show for it. Any government interested in justice, order and its good name would launch an impartial inquiry into such a grave charge. Any society interested in peace and fair-play would demand such an inquiry of its government.

Instead the regime seems to be planning a witch hunt against Mr. Samaraweera. According to police spokesman an investigation might be launched against Mr. Samaraweera under the Official Secret Act for “divulging information regarding national security and information about the security forces” . Is the regime accusing Mr. Samaraweera of revealing state secrets? Wouldn’t such an accusation be tantamount to accepting that Mr. Samaraweera spoke the truth about Aluthgama riots?

If Mr. Samaraweera lied, why not arrest him for slander and other lesser crimes?

If Mr. Samaraweera did not lie, then the ‘great betrayal’ Sri Lanka’s viscerally Orwellian army spokesman was blathering about was committed not by Mr. Samaraweera but by Gotabhaya Rajapaksa and his brothers.

Before Black July, Sri Lanka experienced two minor riots, in 1977 and 1981 (the burning of the Jaffna library). Had Jayewardene regime responded sanely, sensibly and lawfully to these outbreaks, had Sinhala society condemned these outbreaks unequivocally, Black July and many other consequent disasters could have been avoided.

Are we living in a similar interregnum? Is this is the uneasy calm before the next bloody tornado? Will we evade the abyss or plunge into it, singing patriotic songs and waving the Lion and ‘Buddhist’ flags?

Rioters are law-breakers. If the government implements the law, without fear or favour, another, greater, disaster might be avoidable. But the regime is not interested in prosecuting criminals but in persecuting enemies. So UNP provincial councillor, Mujibar Rahaman has been questioned, Watareka Vijitha Thero has been arrested and Mangala Samaraweera might be summoned to the Fourth Four.
Meanwhile the criminals of Aluthgama remain as free as air.

Governments can instigate/encourage riots; but such violence cannot flourish in the absence of societal approbation. In July 1983, the rioters were empowered by the sense that a large component of Sinhala society (if not the majority) approved of what they were doing. Without that oxygen, the fires of Black July would not have blazed for as long as they did.

Lankan Buddhists, lay and ordained, led by the Chief Prelates have to make a decision: who is our Teacher? Is it the Buddha with his message of compassion and non-violence for all living beings? Or is it Bhikku Mahanama, Anagarika Dharmapala and Galagoda-Atte Gnanasara Thera, with their anti-Buddhist justification of violence against ‘unbelievers’?

Are we Buddhists, the followers of the Gautama Buddha? Or are we Mahawamsa-Dharmapala-Gnanasara disciples?

The New War?

In 2008, as the war was grinding towards a victorious conclusion, the principal of a school in Galle ordered the father of a Muslim pupil out of his office for wearing a prayer cap.
That was an early sign of the new disaster which is almost upon us.

Post-war, we Sinhalese should have made a conscious effort to prove to minorities that we are not what we were in 1956, 1972, 1973 and 1983. Instead, under Rajapaksa aegis and intoxicated by the ‘great patriotic victory’, we acted as if there was nothing wrong with 1956, 1972, 1973 and 1983.

To win the war, the Rajapaksas appealed to the fanatic in the Sinhala soldier and the Sinhala civilian. Now to maintain themselves in power they are appealing to the fanatic in Sinhala-Buddhist citizens and monk. The Rajapaksas need enemies and Sinhala-Buddhist supremacists have enemies. The Rajapaksas need a new war, to justify the imposition of a familial autocracy on an imperfect democracy; Sinhala-Buddhists supremacists are never without a handy casus belli.

The Tamils have been taught a lesson; now is the turn of the Muslims.
Someday, the turn of the Christians too will arrive.

Fanatics inhabit a different mental universe, a psychological wasteland in which reason does not exist and any barbarity is permissive in the name of the chosen ‘cause’. That was the logic of Black July. That mindset helped the Tigers to triumph over the more moderate Tamil options. The LTTE in turn helped the Rajapaksas to power.

The moderate Muslim leaders, the ones who believe in democracy and non-violence, are being discredited and are discrediting themselves. Their successors will be neither non-violent nor democratic. Aluthgama would have lent credence to the voices of immoderation in the Muslims community. If a bigger outbreak follows, it will be a death knell for the moderate, non-violent and democratic Muslim. In his/her place will be the Jihadist.

The Rajapaksas may not mind that. The Sinhala-Buddhist fanatics may not mind that.

But is that the future we want?

The allegation that there were 1,000 Jihadists in a mosque in Aluthgama is inane. If there were even a singhel Jihadist he/she would not have just lobbed stones. Do we want Sri Lanka to become a target for real Jihadists out there in the world? Do we want suicide bombers and bombs again, probably on a larger scale?

It is easy to conjure spectres; getting rid of them when the work is done is quite another matter. Before we allow the Rajapaksas and their crazy acolytes to damage Sinhala-Muslim relations beyond the point of recovery, we should ask: Do we really want another war?